A group of companies that register global Internet domain names are calling on the Internet's domain name management body to reject a controversial agreement with the biggest player in the market.
They want ICANN to agree to changes that they say would mitigate the potential impact on competition.
Several firms, or registrars, that compete with VeriSign in the business of registering Internet domain names in the most popular groups, .com, .net and .org are responding to a controversial agreement negotiated by the company and staff for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group picked by the US government to manage the Internet's Domain Name System.
ICANN's board of directors is set to vote on the controversial agreement on Monday. If the board agrees to it, the US Commerce Department must still bless the new deal.
The deal revises an agreement reached in 1999 among VeriSign's subsidiary Network Solutions, ICANN and the Commerce Department as part of ICANN's efforts to introduce competition into the domain name market.
Up until mid-1999, Network Solutions had a government-sanctioned monopoly over this business of registering names in dot-com, dot-net and dot-org, which are known as generic top-level domain names (gTLDs).
Under the 1999 deal, the company would be allowed to control the database, or registry, of all the domain names that have been registered in dot-com, dot-net and dot-org until at least 2007 if it agreed to sell off its registrar operation, the retail end of offering domain name registration services to Internet users.
The registry is a lucrative business given that VeriSign collects US$6 each year for every name registered in dot-com, dot-net and dot-org.
Under the revised deal, VeriSign can keep its registrar business and continue to operate the dot-com registry until at least 2007 and most likely beyond, if it agrees to divest of the dot-org registry by 2002 and the dot-net registry by 2006. The company will have a chance to rebid to operate dot-net but must compete with others.
In their statement, which was sent to ICANN staff and to the group's Names Council, which is supposed to provide the board with advice on domain name issues, a dozen registrars said "these proposed modifications will make a contract that was already bad for the industry, even worse."
